Wendy Edsall-Kerwin's Journey as an Artist

3 Ring Weekend!

Some of you might be aware that quite a few members of the Etsy Metal Team have decided to do the Ring A Day challenge this year. Each participant will make one ring a day for every day in 2010. Pretty ambitious. I have been following some of the results and have particularly impressed with the work of Sara Westermark. Her work inspired me so much that I decided it was finally time that I made a ring.

A ring?! That’s right. I haven’t made a ring since my sophomore metals class at Tyler. I just don’t think that small. Lucky for me, big rings have been coming back and now seemed like the perfect time to try. I had some crazy lace agate cabs left from the shipment of stones I got over the Summer. I decided to use the round cab and to use a textured back and hammered ring band and bezel/prong setting. It all went well until what I thought was an oddly placed band in the agate design ended up being a fissure that cracked when I put the last prong into place. (That’s the chance you take when you buy discount stones off eBay!) I put some glue to stablize the crack, but I don’t think I can ethically sell it at this point.

On a happier note, I really liked the design and will definitely do it again! I also ended up making two other rings during the downtime while working on the agate ring. I was just playing around with a piece or fold formed copper left over from one of my medallions and decided to rivet the ends together.

Then I used a piece of silver from the fold formed collar (featured in the Winter Newsletter), wrapped it around a mandrel and then textured a thick piece of silver wire and riveted it to the band. All three of the rings were patinated using liver of sulfur to darken their color. I really liked making these rings and both my husband